A Butterfly Effect
by Keikou Tenshin
Summary: But those butterflies in his stomach fluttered too high and caught in his throat. His former lieutenant, before Rangiku had come along; he didn't miss her. He wouldn't allow himself to.
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

* * *

"Want some?" She brandished the ruby red bottle at him, the dark liquid inside it gleaming near-black. The sunset before them cast rippling red light across the sky, bathing them in the scarlet glow. They were old photographs under a safelight.

"No," he answered definitely, his eyes not wavering from their fixed destination: the skyline.

"Mm," she acknowledged passively. Her own eyes flickered back and forth between her glass and her companion, watching slow ripples skim along the surface of her wine as she tilted it. Watching its surface shift uncomfortably in the silence.

"Thank you."

He remembers the way her eyes burned against the sunset, so in contrast with his own, as he reluctantly brought his gaze to hers.

"For keeping me company." She broke eye contact and brought her gleaming glass to her lips, taking a small sip. "I know you have a heart under all that ice, Captain."

She spoke as if it were a fact of which she was the exclusive keeper; as if no one else in the world knew… including Toshiro. He suddenly felt very interested in the abrasive rooftop where they were sitting, the shingles rough underneath his hands. He could barely hear her chuckle, near-silent, as a lonely butterfly landed in his line of view.

* * *

"Where did you get that wine in the first place?" he asks the wind, his words spiraling lonely circles around him for lack of a recipient. "You delinquent…"

Toshiro looks at the sky, the setting sun; it's not as it was that evening so long ago. The sun casts a discontented dark glow in the clouds and they scatter along the skyline, indignant and somnolent, rumbling threats of an impending storm. A breath escapes his lips with a note of weariness as his hand tightens on the neck of the bottle. He isn't going to drink the wine inside. It's left over from her last stay here; he knows she had touched it at some point before they left... before the accident.

Maybe it's pitiful to want to hold onto it, he thinks, and the un-entertained notion of throwing it off the rooftop tugs at his consciousness. The thought wants to destroy anything left of her, shatter it into pieces so small Toshiro can't put them back together again, can't think of her anymore. He feels his hand make a surreptitious move with the thought, but it doesn't go far, weak as it is.

The buildings around him are taller than he remembers, and the grass is grayer, but the house has stayed the same, he notes with undue bitterness. He stands, feeling the roof shift barely under his weight, and wonders how many times she had lazed around up here instead of working. It's probably leaking somewhere or another from her abuse, old as it is. He shakes his head and climbs down the creaky ladder, weather-worn from years left unprotected.

As he sets foot onto the concrete, a lonely butterfly's torn wings struggle to find purchase in the pre-storm winds. It's thrown helplessly into a nearby spider's web.


	2. The Walk

"Where are you going, Captain?" Rangiku calls from behind him with her usual curiosity. Toshiro doesn't stop, attempting to concentrate on the sound of his steps hitting the rough autumn pavement. The robotic repetition gives him something else to concentrate on, anything but that house.

"Nowhere," he answers quietly, apparently speaking to the fitful breeze and tumbling litter on the street beside him, as Rangiku could certainly not hear his words. Hands in his pockets, he meanders around the town, trying to escape what every inch of that house screams at him… but the streets murmur just the same. Distant recollections of walking this street before tug at the edges of his conscious, begging the acknowledgment of the one missing element between then and now. The one piece of this puzzle, that he had spent so many years attempting to bury, threatens any attempt of silence in his mind's unrest.

He finds a more or less deserted bench to rest and collect himself before returning to the house; he knows he will have to go back eventually, as that is an inevitability with the impending storm moving closer. But for now… he needs to wait. And think.

For now, he needs to be alone.

Quietly he stares into the city, the clouds, anything to ease the burden of what he should have put behind him long ago. She's dead. And that should be the end of it.

He can't bring her back. He can't change what happened. His chance to act is gone: ten years gone, in fact. So why does it feel like it happened yesterday? Why does being here, back in this place- why does it feel like she could call his name at any moment? And why is it still this painful to acknowledge that she never will?

He leans forward and rests his head on his hands with a barely audible sigh. Being here again, imprisoned with the same emotions as that day so long ago: it wearies him. Weakens him.

Across the broad boulevard, he catches a brief glimpse of a coquettish girl and her male companion. She chatters excitedly alongside him, pointing out places and people, gesturing at the grey surroundings with an umbrella.

She's wearing a little red dress and stilettos to spite the weather.

Toshiro sighs, and resentfully yields to a nagging memory that had been lingering in the corner of his eye, nettling and uncomfortable.

* * *

Her heels slid on the slick sidewalk; she wobbled unsteadily for a moment, clutching Toshiro's shoulder for (mostly moral) support. Patches of ice on the concrete made travelling nigh impossible, and he should just carry her like a regular gentleman, he recalled her slurring through a champagne smile.

Still lit in countless tiny courtyards around them were flurries of lights here and there, some displays overzealous and others decidedly lacking. He remembers the stunted little trees with lights wrapped partially around their trunks and branches, small tornadoes of holiday spirit in the concrete jungle.

"Toshiro," she mumbled, "Toshiro, Toshiro, what- why are we- why are you here?" She giggled, wavering unsteadily on the sidewalk. "I mean, I- wh-why did you have to come get me? I was having fun, I was… It was fun."

Opting not to answer her uncoordinated question as it fell all over itself, he watched her black heels wobble unsteadily across the sidewalk. Could she possibly get any more plastered?

"Why does this always happen, Lieutenant?" he asked, his voice stern and wholly irritated.

"What?" the word spilled from her mouth entangled in a short laugh.

"You," he said, "and your indulgences. Every time we come to the human world, you overdo it. Why is this an issue?"

"Oh, Toshiro," she sighed, her voice sagging under the weight of her words, "I don't know. Maybe I'm desperately trying to fill the void in my heart that my father left when he walked away."

The suddenly sober words threw him for a loop, and he looked at her, not expecting to meet her serious, deep red eyes in the dim streetlights. She grinned at him.

"Or maybe I just like to have fun. You should try it sometime."

* * *

Her words ring in his ear, clear as a bell, as if she had just spoken them. Toshiro never did appreciate her bait-and-switch teasing; but there was always that note in her voice… As if she'd really meant the former. She was a talented actress, however, and even now he knows not what to believe.

Thunder rumbles again overhead, louder this time, bullying him back to the house. With another small sigh he resigns himself to his condemnation, and begins the small trek back to the house.


End file.
